I am sure Obama will deliver a stirring address. He will strive just as he did in the campaign to make people think he's actually standing up for something and looking out for their needs. It's the necessary political cover he needs -- that seed of doubt planted in the disappointed who still want to believe -- to finish selling them out.

Obama is pursuing what is in actuality a Republican agenda. Bailouts for banksters. Expansion of war in AfPak. Essentially establishing torture right up to the line established in the Bybee memos legal. And now, health insurance (not care) reform that mandates citizens buy "junk insurance" they can not afford to use at prices they can't afford to pay lest they be fined, this is the big win on health care that Dems and progressives have worked so hard for? No, this is the Dem version of Bush's health associations and subsidies...which Dems hated (for good reason.)

When it comes to Obama, he wants you to pay attention to his words and act as though they mean something, no matter what your eyes may actually see.

NOW this is the President that I voted for!

If by that you mean "the president who gives a great speech", yes, that likely is the president that you voted for. If by that you mean the president that is going to deliver health care reform that lowers costs, offers a robust and widely available public option and which insures universal access to affordable care for everyone, as opposed to the president that is going to deliver millions of customers under penalty of law to massive, for-profit insurance companies and force them to buy junk insurance that they can not afford to use, then sadly, no.

Obama gives a great speech. He apparently still mesmerizes the same people he mesmerized during the campaign. Unfortunately, what counts is what he does, not what he says.

That speech last night? It wasn't even a strong speech, and by that I mean that the political language he used was designed to get it right past the mass of the public (and the mesmerized) by making them think he was standing up for them and the principles he once articulated. Simultaneously, Obama was with the same language delivering an entirely different message to the politicians he was addressing.

What did Obama tell the gathered representatives from both houses of congress? He told them that reform was about "reducing the unaffordable rise" of costs for health insurance, not insuring universal, affordable health care. He told them that no real, robust and widespread public option was fundamentally necessary, and that even a bill with no public option at all gets his signature. He praised the insurance companies for offering a great public service, when the fact is that the only real service the insurance companies offer is to pool premium dollars and handle the administration of claims. After that, they pay as few claims as possible, and take their cut off the top.

If Obama's speech was the driving force necessary to give us something like the Bad Max Tax Baucus (Liz Fowler/Wellpoint) bill, then it may have been a rousing speech, but it will have been a very bad one indeed.

No robust and widely available public option? No bill!

...unethical and possibly illegal for the President to interfere with decisions or investigations concerning potential prosecutions at the DoJ. Why on earth would these men write such a letter to the President?

...but things like this...

with Patrick, a Democrat, in office, and with Kennedy's death depriving Senate Democrats of a potentially pivotal 60th vote, there was a push -- led, before his death, by the late senator himself -- to rewrite the law again.

...being accurate, it makes it hard to complain when Republicans in positions of advantage use it to rewrite laws for political expediency. What are Dems gonna say other than "Do as I say, not as I do"?

...before the real thing shows up:

Why do you hate Obama?

There. Now we don't have to have apologists come in and tell us why questioning the strategy in Afghanistan is disloyalty to the President and based on nothing more than his race.

Ms. Jones has written a concise article with some inconvenient facts. Those facts will be ignored by Those That Count®.

I expect that the Pentagon brass and the Commander in Chief are well aware of the facts in this bit of reportage. But as facts are oft times found to be inconvenient things, it will be pretended that they do no exist.

Yes, there are better ways to deliver aid than through the training of armies...several times over...and the supply of firearms. Yes, the better ways are also cheaper ways. But the better cheaper ways don't serve the purpose. They don't provide the same income for our MIC, and they don't provide the same return for stockholders, and they don't fit in with the ideals of a nation cum empire that is determined to spread "freedom" with the barrel of a gun.

Wasn't Obama supposed to be anti-war?

Mr. Koppelman, you and I both know what the plain language translation of "a version of the public plan" means. It's politi-speak for CYA nonsense. Please don't carry freaking spin and act as if it means anything other than spin.

"A version of the public plan" is not the goal of people pushing for a strong, robust, open to choice public option. Surely you know that. Keee-Ryst!